[Rd] Building packages on Windows fails

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Peter Kleiweg wrote:

> Prof Brian Ripley schreef op de 7e dag van de wijnmaand van het jaar 2005:
>
>> On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Peter Kleiweg wrote:
>>
>>> Duncan Murdoch schreef op de 6e dag van de wijnmaand van het jaar 2005:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Peter Kleiweg wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What has changed in R for Windows from version 1.7.1 to
>>>>> 2.2.0 that won't allow me to build binary packages?
>>>>
>>>> Many things have changed; I don't know which is causing
>>>> the failure you see. One change is that instructions are
>>>> now collected in the Installation and Administration
>>>> manual. Try following the setup instructions there and see
>>>> if it still fails.
>>>
>>> I can't find anything on building packages for Windows in
>>> that manual.
>>
>> Your problems was installing, so the section on `Installing
>> Packages' should help you.
>
> Installing worked fine. Building a binary distribution (with
> compiled help files) is what didn't work.
>
> This worked fine:
>
>    Rcmd build iL04
>
> But that just gave a gzip'ed tarfile, not a zip-file, and
> without the compiled helpfiles.
>
> This didn't work:
>
>    Rcmd build --force --binary iL04
>
>
>>> I did find a solution to the problem. On a Linux install,
>>> each package has a file CONTENTS. These are missing from the
>>> Windows install. I copied those files from my Linux install
>>> to my Windows install, and then I could build my own
>>> package. So I guess, these CONTENTS files should be included
>>> in the Windows install.
>>
>> And indeed they are, as the presence of 500+ packages on CRAN
>> for Windows will show you.
>
> Well, I just ran the install program for Windows, with compiled
> html help, but without the ordinary html help files. In that
> case, no CONTENTS files get installed.

Ah, that's the clue.  People normally build complete binary distributions: 
let's see if we can track that down.

>> The recommended way to build a binary package on Windows is
>>
>> R CMD INSTALL --build
>
> Yes, that works. Even without the CONTENTS files. And this is
> recommended in the manual "Creating R packages", another manual
> than Duncan Murdoch was referring to.
>
> I was using a method that was recommended in earlier versions.
> Perhaps that method should just be disabled, with a
> message about the current method, instead of having it fail for
> obscure reasons.

It is not quite the same thing.  I have been in favour of removing it, but 
others have differed in their opinions.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595